Winter Towns
by Mocking Razors
Summary: Jack Frost has a long standing crush on the magnificently adventurous Hiccup Horrendous Haddock The Third from afar. So when Hiccup cracks open his window and climbs back into his life, summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge, Jack follows. - Based on John Green's Paper Towns. Hijack/Frostcup - Rated T for sex references. One shot.


Halò

This has been edited all over again, so hopefully those stupid grammar mistakes have been fixed. Let me know in the comments if you think that there should be a second part to this story!

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Have you ever had the feeling that you are doing the most stupid thing in your life? For example, when you first skip classes or jump out of the roof or decide to run away from home because your parents simply do not understand you?

In my case, one of my stupidities was to fall in love with my best friend: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third.

My name is Jackson Overland. I used to be the most normally ignored student from Berk High School. I had a perfectly normal life, in the perfectly normal neighborhood, in a perfectly normal house with my perfectly normal parents.

Until I was on fifth grade.

Hiccup's family had just moved in to the house next to mine. His mother was the tallest woman I've ever seen, and that's saying something. Then his father, the largest man that has ever stepped on the island of Berk.

And then I saw Hiccup.

His skin color could disappear in the mid of all those freckles, there were just so many. And compared to his parents, he seemed even shorter than what he actually was. My parents came out, and I was pretty much forced to go and help them unpack the boxes like the perfectly good neighbors we were.

I ended up strategically stuck with Hiccup for the rest of the day. Pretty soon, due to our proximity both geographically and of age, and for no other reason I can come out with, we quickly became friends. And you know, for a guy who has no friends at school (like me), actually studies at school (like me) and doesn't know the concept of having a social like (like myself), being friends with Hiccup was the most awesome thing on the world. Fifth grade suddenly was pretty much awesome.

Until this one day. Hiccup, snowball wars and me. I remember that moment so precisely that it still scares me. I threw a ball that exploded in his face; he retrieved three steps towards the street. Hiccup's wide laugh…

…the car hit him.

For several months, school sucked again, until Hiccup came back. Prosthetic leg taking place below his left knee. Then the whole school cheered him and declared how much he was awesome and a true survivor. It could go well, Hiccup now had a social life, and if he had, then his best friend had to have one as well, at least according to the laws of physics.

At least until James "Tuffnut" Thorston declared how he saw me push Hiccup to the street when the car came. So yes, my fame came, as the guy who made Hiccup lose his leg. It still surprises me how much everyone found a way to keep Hiccup as far away as possible from me.

People washed his brain, opened his skull and took away the part of him that cared about me. Therefore, by the sixth grade, I no longer existed for him. Sometimes he would even look at me in the eyes and not even recognize me.

Eventually, sometime between the eight or sixth grade, puberty train came and hit me. Hard. I grew until I was six foot tall, my chin was no longer smooth and rounded, but pointy and angular. My balance ran away from my feet, and I became awkwardly clumsy and lost in my feet. Even my voice ran away from me.

Eleventh year was the hardest. That year, my dad died on a car crash. I still remember the anger/pain/funeral, where only a few people went to pay their respects. And surprise, Hiccup was among them. And it was probably the last time he spoke any words to me: I am sorry for your lost and a handshake. A fucking handshake.

And for some reason I could not make myself comprehend, by next week, when I was dragged back to school, he waved his head at me. I don't know what that meant, if he was inviting me to join him, or if he was simply saying hi or signalizing that he knew I existed. Lost in thought, I nodded back at him, acting just as he would cordially act to me for five years, walking straight by him and entering Philosophy class. Although my body was present, my mind got lost when I had no longer a perfectly normal family in my perfectly normal house in my perfectly normal life.

For whatever reasons, I was not emotionally broken by twelfth grade. Unlike my mom. Maybe the fact that she had to visit her therapist three times a week helped her, but I only needed one. I had my first girlfriend, Ana. And my first breakup, in a record time of six weeks. Maybe I wasn't good enough for her. Maybe she was a complete bitch.

Maybe I was still divided between my long-standing fascination about Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third.

Because everyone could tell, Hiccup was something. After eleventh grade, his life became a series of unbelievably epic adventures.

Like the time he ran from home in the mid of the night, ran to Berk's train station and hid in a wagon all the way from Berk (In the west coast) to New York, only to take a picture of himself at the top of the Empire State – where some say he had to run off the security by jumping with a makeshift parachute. Or that other time when he went hiding somewhere in North Carolina and hosted with beekeepers for two weeks; they taught him how to play the piano. There was also that one time when he disappeared from Berk and visited all the cities linked by route sixty-six (he also took one picture of every city he went). All of those are too insane to be true, but were always proved so.

His life was awesome. Everybody knew him wherever he went.

The very opposite of me. I was… invisible.

Therefore, with all the character background set, this is how I find myself just following my daily routine, on present tense. Today is May 18, two weeks left for the end of the school year. School is still the never-failing place for a marathon of six hours of pure torture. But I am no longer that lonely. I have friends already, and for me, this is like winning the Olympics. They basically consist of Gale "Bunny" Larson, who is even taller than me, and Sandy Holmes, fairly short for his age, and who would never speak much (I still don't know how I became friends with a guy who only speaks once a year).

"Jack," Gale greets me, his eyes locked on this invisible target ahead of us as if someone could jump on him at any minute. He'd be scary for most people, but not for me.

"Kangaroo," I reply, and even not looking straight on his face, I can almost feel his scowl. He hates the nickname. But there's reason why:

When Gale was thirteen, his dad took him for a four-day tour in the Australian desert. Apparently, that should have been awesome, until a wild kangaroo invade the jeep they were. It would have been a cool story by itself, but it became slightly funny after we learned that the kangaroo actually stole Gale's clothe bags. It truly became hilarious after he told us that they found a baby kangaroo inside the bag, sleeping in the middle of Gale's clothes. Not enough, a journalist that conveniently found them in the desert spread the word on a sensationalist website, and the story of the Kangaroo boy spread all the way to reach his old school – along with a whole list of infectious diseases that people used to target him left and right.

He bought the first plane tickets to live with his uncle in America.

I heard that story like a thousand times before, and I may hear another thousand, but I guess it will never be less funny at any moment.

Sandy waits for us at the school library, his books always scattered around him like a people-proof bubble. Sometimes friends-proof too.

"Hey Sandy," I whisper. The library keeper is always keeping an eye at me. I swear that one day she will put up an electrified fence that works only against me. "Already have a prom date?" He waves his head.

"Do we really need to ge' prom dates?" Says Gale. "I'm not even sure if I wanna go."

"The prom is a waste, both of time and money." I say. A few girls behind us look away from their books only to stare at us like if I had just said the most terrible thing in the world, which I might as well could have.

The bell rings, forcing us to go back to the wildness of the corridors. Gale tells Sandy several incomprehensible words in his thick accent as I simply nod and forget about the world when I see Hiccup. Standing in front of his locker, a wonderful masterpiece of long blonde hair and blue eyes named Astrid (his girlfriend) beside him as he apparently laughs about something. But she didn't make any jokes apparently because he is pointing hysterically to (his cousin) Snotlout at the other side of the hall. I smile at him, even knowing that he can't see me.

"Ge' over it, mate" I hear Gale muffles to me, a weird grin on his face. If only it was that easy…

The lecture forces itself in our heads until the last class, were the gates of this underworld open and we are free to return to the world of living. At least that is how it looks like. Good thing I have a car. A simple black sedan that belonged to my father until he died. My mom had her own car, a silver minivan, and she could never stand getting into dad's car without crying a river of tears, but somehow it never affected me that much. I make the quickest way home, not really trying to avoid the unbearable silence that takes hold of the place for almost two years.

My mom is waiting for me on the kitchen. The dishes already drying on the dishwasher as she reads a nursery book, several nonsenses slipping into her head as she eats a bowl of cereal. She has some weird habits, my mom.

She does not look at me when I get in.

"Hey mom." I say. She raises her head and sends me a wave with her head.

I step away when she doesn't say anything, gladly, and I'm heading for my room when she shouts.

"The school has called today," I freeze on my feet. "They still haven't sent any applications for med schools."

I roll my eyes when she says med schools.

For the last two years, my mother has been feeding me with her dreams for my life. Princeton. Harvard. Yale. Duke.

Med school. Because she thinks that if I become a model of what an American teenager is supposed to be, then she will be the model of what the Best Widow Mom in the World should be.

Eventually, she found me writing stories. I told her it would be a hobby, because there is no way she would have her only child doing something that (she) I could not make a living out of. But that got stuck on her head, and eventually I was dragged to do the super important aptitude test. And medicine was not on the list.

I was relieved. She was angry.

It was the first big fight we had since dad died. She would not talk to me for two weeks, and avoid her best to stay away from me. Writing is not good for my future, she said. I had a weird fantasy, of selling my books for an agent (and I don't know what stops me because I must have like at least three finished projects) and becoming a New York Times bestselling author. Or even getting hired by a super famous daily journal and writing a Pulitzer winning article. I'd make a thousand copies of the list, glue them to my mom's house and paint in red ink HA! a hundred times.

"Jack?" She insists. My name sounds wrong when pronounced by her lips.

"What?" I pretend I don't know what she is talking about.

"Will you sign up for medicine?" It does not even sound like a question. She's giving me a command, expecting me to sit up and beg for her orders.

I must gather all the courage in the world when I say, "No, mom, I'm not." The words echo through the walls, but she does not hear them. "You know why. We already had this talk."

"Then what are you going to do? Write as you starve?" Her voice is getting uglier as she grows impatient. "Is that what you want?"

I finally look at her. "Yes." My voice is much lower and penetrating than anything else. She only nods, and pretend that she won't be thinking about it for too long as she returns to her textbooks.

I can hear her mutters as I run upstairs, "It's your life…"

My day went pretty normal after that. However, I could not stop myself from staring at Hiccup's window at the other side of the street. But I was getting over him. I just had to graduate, go to college, and meet someone new. Then forget the first stupidity ever happened.

I text Sandy before going to bed. He's hipped on the new Star Wars film – giving me a hundred different spoilers and apologizing for half of them. We hang up, I follow the ritual: Brush my teeth, take off my clothes, tuck in for bed. I'm nearly falling asleep when I hear it, the swift sound of my window opening, the heavy weight slipping in and the switch of the flash light. It happens so suddenly and so smoothly that I barely understand the shock of seeing Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third standing over my window for the first time in six years.

"Hiccup!" I say, louder than what I should the time. Hiccup is wearing a soft green hoodie and his traditional green converse. I am jumping out of bed when he literally rolls across my window and falls graciously near my bed. "Hey." I say again, trying to keep my voice steady.

"Hey." He says the first words he pronounced to me in years. "I need to borrow your car."

I stop where I am standing. "What?" He rolls his eyes.

"I need to borrow your car." He repeats. I send a weird look at him, as if he was asking me to give him one of my kidneys. "I have a few things I need to do tonight and more than half of them require a get-away driver."

"What? Are you going to do anything illegal?" I say, realizing that I am pretty much naked in front of him. I rush to grab my T-shirt, and slip it on.

"Uhh, it depends. It's more like doing something crazy, to be more precise."

"Like what?" Hiccup makes a funny face at my shirt, and I realize that I am wearing it inverted.

"I have seven places to crash on Berk tonight, and if I tell you everything right now it would be like giving you spoilers so it's better if you learn as we're on the road." It looks like he planned the whole speech to convince me to go with him (and I am seriously tempted), or maybe it's just natural for him to be persuasive.

"Nope." I say, shaking my head.

"Oh, come on Jack, for the sake of the old times!" He is almost jumping on his feet, excitement shining through his green eyes.

"Hiccup, it's like, eleven o'clock right now, I can't simply leave now, my parents…" I stop myself. Old habits do not die so easy. "… I mean, my mom would freak out."

"She's never gonna notice." I stare at him, and he is making that stupid and awkward puppy face. I shake my head again.

"Hiccup, you haven't even talked to me for years already, and now you just expect me to go with you in this crazy… all-nighter stuff of yours like nothing happened?" I spit it out, and there are two fuming seconds of silence before Hiccup takes a step forward.

"Look, Jack… I'm not asking you to pretend like nothing happened… I just really want you to come with me tonight." His voice is so low and much stronger than I ever heard before. It is kind of addictive. "I'm sorry for everything that happened to us in the past few years. I am. But if you could come with me, only for tonight, I promise you, things will be different."

He looks at me, expecting my answer. This could might as well be my last chance of ever talking to him again. But before I can reply, he looks down:

"Okay then… I'm really sorry for waking you up." He says, visibly disappointed, walking towards my window, and I know I'm losing him.

"Hiccup…"

"Good night, Jack." He curves towards the window, ready to launch himself.

"Just wait!" I nearly shout. He freezes with one leg already out of the room, but turns his head to stare at me. "Look… can you promise me things will be different?"

He gives me a thin smile. "Yes, Jack. I promise."

I nod, mostly to myself as I shake my hands, ready to regret everything that we might end up doing tonight. "Okay then." I nod repeatedly in self assurance. "Okay…"

He jumps back inside, and before I can notice, he laces my neck in a strange hug. My heart almost snaps out my chest, the feeling of his body pressed against mine is messing with all of my feelings at once, and I am dumbstruck. All I can do is hug him back, uncertain. It does not last much, and soon I feel him stepping away.

"Okay," I say, trying to remember how to make a whole sentence again. "So what are we gonna do?"

He smiles. "First, we are going to do something really weird. Then something really stupid. Then something almost intelligent. And for the finale something really crazy."

"Could you be any less specific?" I say after a pause.

"All will be revealed shortly, my friend." He says. "I have a list with me; we have seven things to do tonight, first of them at Berk's department store."

"We're going shopping?" I ask incredulously.

"If we hurry."

And that is how I find myself jumping out my window at eleven o'clock tonight.

We make into my car silently, and I still feel Hiccup's fingers snatching my hand when I'm pulling my door. "Don't close them here!" He whispers. "Too noisy."

I do not start the car. I simply let it roll down the street for two blocks before I twist the keys.

"Okay," Hiccup says, pulling out a paper map out of his backpack. He looks at it with a concentrated expression. "First, we're going downtown Berk, I'll tell you where to go afterwards."

"You still haven't told me what we are going to do tonight." I say.

Hiccup sighs. He looks at the street lights before saying. "Apparently… My girlfriend has been cheating on me." When he says that, a rush of surprise, hope and disbelief hit me like a train wreck. "For the last three weeks, with my dear little cousin."

"No way!" I say, trying to sound upset for him. "Why would she do that?"

"Let's see… He's like almost a foot taller, with many more muscles and a strong narcissistic sense, so not because he's nice."

I keep staring at the road. "So you are going to prank him?"

"We are!" He has no idea of the effect that his phrase causes on me. "And not pranking him. This is Hiccup's Horrendous Haddock conspiracy plan." He turns his head at me. "And basically, I am also giving you the best night of your life."

Once again, I feel the shivers.

"Okay then, mister avenger." He lets out a small chuckle.

We pull over downtown Berk, in front of the Department Store, open twenty-four hours.

"So what are we going to buy?" I say when walk through the huge glass doors of the store.

"Several air horns, to begin with." I stare at him. "And balloons, we will need a few. Then lube…"

"Lube?" I hold his forearm. He simply nods.

"Here, check this out." He hands me a piece of paper from his pocket.

My eyebrows could have won the Olympics of all the movements they did as I read. "Mentos, Coke, nail polish…?" I stare at him, and he holds a tight smile. "Hiccup, what the hell are we going to do?"

"As popularly known, my dear cousin is hosting a party today at his place. "You wouldn't know, you don't have a social life." I am about to protest when he keeps talking. "And everyone can get into a crowded party without being noticed. Especially when everyone is already Amy Winehouse drunk."

I look at him with a dreading sense of fear.

We both hold a basket full of the things he snatches from the shelves, which somehow includes not only Mentos and lubricant (which okay, it is weird), but also fishes – haddock, he corrects me -, saran wrap, veet, paint spray, a bag of party balloons and a whole bunch of other things that I have no idea why are we going to use it for.

"So tell me about it." He says.

"About what?"

"About what you are going to do after graduation."

I think about it for a while. "I have no idea to be honest."

Hiccup chuckles. "Me neither."

"You can draw." I say before I can think, and it is a mistake, because I saw Hiccup drawing like a thousand times in art class, and now I am going to look like a stalker freak.

And just because I have the worst luck in the world, he notices: "You've seen me drawing?"

"Well…" I end up getting silent. It might be just an impression, but he seems to blush a little.

"In this case, you can write." He tells me, and I nearly crash on the floor. "I read the school paper."

"You? Reading the school paper? Since when?" I fake a winning smile, but who's competing anyway?

"Um… since you started writing it." Now I can feel my cheeks taking a dep shade of red. "I like the stories you publish."

I'm going tomato red. "Thanks." Is all I can reply without embarrassing myself.

I don't know if there is a manual for what to say to the checkout woman at almost midnight when you are buying fish, lube, condoms, nail polish, air horns, balloons, coke, Mentos, but Hiccup has a way of breaking the awkwardness:

"It's not as weird as it looks."

"It's still weird." She replies, shaking her head. Hiccup and I share a look, and a wicked grim forms in our faces.

Snotlout's house is a gigantic monstrosity made for gods. It is in the richest part of Berk, in a small island that links to the main island of Berk by small stone bridges.

"Alright, this is the first target. By the way, stop the car headed away from his house," Hiccup says when we park a few meters away from the party. Hiccup puts some of the things we bought inside his backpack, including most of the air horns, one of the fishes, the Mentos and cosmetic stuff, including an entire pack of condoms and the lube.

First he grabs the Mentos pack, opens it and starts to tie the candies, one on another with a thin black line, like a spider web. He only stops when he has something like six small Mentos-net. "So this is what we're going to do. We'll get in by the back door of the kitchen, and make sure not to be seen."

I hold his arm before he can get out. "Wait, what if someone recognizes you?"

"They won't," He smiles in a mischievous way. "They are probably too drunk by now to know even the floor where they're stepping on."

"Hic, this is a bad idea." Somehow, the old nickname slips to now. He smiles at it, though.

"No, Jack. This is a tremendous idea."

Midnight, which means that the party is far from ending.

Hiccup makes his way around my car, and grab a small paper bag from his pocket. He opens it, and I see several little white feathers. He places then on the car exhaust.

"What was that for?" I ask, seeing how he placed them on my car.

"You'll see." He heads towards the loud vibrating house.

Several people who I recognize from school are dancing and jumping with the loud pop music, and Hiccup raises his hood above his head like a badass spy from clichéd espionage films. I do the same thing with my blue hoodie, and we both disappear inside the crowded house. Some people look at me. The girls smile, and get close, raising their breasts as they dance, and I have that sickening feeling of stepping out of a dream until I focus on Hiccup a few feet away, signaling me to come.

The kitchen is pretty much empty. I recognize a quarterback from the football team, but he's way too drunk while being yelled at by his girlfriend.

"Great, phase one," Hiccup says, flipping his backpack off his shoulders and opening the zipper.

He pulls out the tied Mentos while I bring every last drink I find on the kitchen to the sink. I only watch as he opens the bottles, one by one, and places the Mentos-net hanging one inch above the liquid and then carefully closing the bottles again, cutting the excess of the thread with a knife. He does that on five bottles, most of them coke. Then he leaves them at close sight.

"Okay, phase two." He says.

"Run to the bathroom." I complete. He nods.

Nobody is walking to the kitchen so early. Everyone is already wasted enough – it's Friday night-. But we do find some couples making out on the corridors. "Gross," I hear Hiccup whispering. It could be us, I think, immediately shaking my head. The bathroom is empty as well, and he locks the door. "Okay, take this." He throws the nail polisher in the air. "Paint it in the soap."

I smirk, looking at the perfect shade of green in both the soap and the nail polisher. He takes out the lube and the condoms, opening the bottle of the liquid hand soap and draining it on the sink. "Oh my Gosh…" I whisper when I see him opening the lube bottle.

"Shut up." He smiles. In a few seconds, the bottles of liquid soap turns into something else. "Well, there could have been a better use to it, but given the circumstances…" I turn red again by imagining the circumstances.

He turns to the toilet bowl, and grabs the saran wrap from his backpack. He turns the seat up, and wraps up the entire thing from below.

"…well, that is going to make a statement." I say.

"Don't I know it?" He grins at my comment. "Okay, phase two is done, now phase three."

He guides me out of the bathroom, and I breathe easily when I see that nobody saw us. He pulls me to Snotlout's room, and he searches his backpack for a thick black pen, handing me the backpack when he finds it. "Take a fish and hide it in the blankets." He says before jumping over the bed and start drawing… no, writing on the wall in a double line calligraphy: Sweet dreams with the fish and the bitch, cousin. ~H.

I cannot stop myself from laughing at it. I slip the fish around the pillows before sneaking them under the blankets, the smell already stuck on my fingers. Then Hiccup looks out the window, and his eyes lock somewhere in the crowd. "And there they are." He says.

I stare at the window too, only to find Snotlout forcefully kissing Astrid in the middle of the crowd. "Let's go back downstairs, we'll finish this." I say, pulling him away from the window. "Phase four."

"The gran-finale." He finishes.

"Wait here," He tells me when we are at the bottom of the stairs, and then he runs out of the door. I wait for what must be a minute, but when he gets back, he is sweating. "We don't have much time." He spits, rushing to me.

Just when the last word escapes his mouth, I jump at the loud boom of the first explosion.

"Fireworks?" The crowd says at the same time, when a light show explodes over the garden, and everyone starts jumping scared before running out to the doors.

"Now!" He pushes me to the living room, where most of the crowd was until a few seconds ago. He hands me some air horns.

"How did you get those fireworks?" I ask.

"My dad." He replies simply. "He won't even notice it. Hurry up!"

He runs to the doors, straps the air horns with tape strategically in the places where the handles should hit the wall. I run to the living room, hiding mine beneath the pillows of the couch, under the carpets, behind the chairs, buttons up, waiting to be pressed. Hiccup returns when the last firework goes off.

"Ergh, what happened at the toilet?" We both hear a male voice yelling from the top of the stairs. When he reaches the last step, I see his hands covered in blue ink, and with a strange gloss on his hands. Only then, I recognize who he is.

"It's Tuffnut!" Hiccup whispers when he does not notice us. I smile as I raise my hand, and we high five, quietly. "Okay, time to go." He jumps from behind the couch and pushes the door just enough so they are one inch from the top of the air-horns.

People start to get back in. We sprint to the garden, and while running I see Hiccup grabbing his phone, flipping the camera on before turning to run backwards.

Then hell breaks loose.

The sound coming from the air-horns is so loud that I could be blasting my eardrums from this distance. The screams are louder. Some of them run out of to the outside, and more horns blow when they open the doors, hitting those Hiccup put on the walls. It's like the fireworks, part two, this one made by stupidity. Wherever people run, they knock against more air-horns. They are trapped in a madhouse.

Laughter presses my ribs as hard as if it could break them, but Hiccup is nearly bowing over his own stomach laughing so hard. People took the prank even further, and now most guys are taking the air-horn madly and if not pressing around the house by themselves, over powering the sound of the music, then they are throwing them around in rage.

"Who did that?!" We hear, and it is certain that the party has been definitely spoiled. When I think it is done, Hiccup raises his finger. "Wait, there's more."

Through the window, we have a perfect view of a really pissed off Snotlout, fuming as most of his minions from the football team try to calm everyone down. Tuffnut is yelling angrily that someone also pranked the toilet, and Hiccup almost snorts his laughter.

"This is fucked up!" Someone yells, and as most guys reach the kitchen, aiming for the drinks, I feel the tension rising up on me, this feeling of power over their panic.

"Those idiots think that drinks are going to keep the party going?" I hear Hiccup muttering to his camera, still rolling.

Snotlout himself reaches the first bottle of coke, ready to mix it with vodka, but it takes only one turn of the pin before the Mentos-net falls on the carbon dioxide, the small candy erupting back and smashing against his face as the coke explodes.

Laughter erupts not only from me, but from every single person on that kitchen, the general ovation and humiliation directed to Snotlout. I remember back on seventh grade when this idiot made me eat a living earthworm from the school's garden, threatening to punch me on the face if I didn't. Revenge takes over me, and it feels good. Until his eyes lock on us.

"Run!" Hiccup grabs my hand, still laughing while he point his phone backwards.

I can hear Snotlout's screams behind from us, but we are already getting in the car, I'm about to turn on the engine on when Hiccup stops me.

"Wait! Let him get close." He instructs, his feet inside the car but his face outside the window.

"What are you doing?! Get in!" I shout.

Snotlout is a few feet away from us when Hiccup screams. "Now!"

I twist the keys, the car turns on and the white feathers are blown through the air, flying until they land on Snotlout's face, sticking to his clothes and skin. I had no idea how many feather Hiccup had put in, made they have successfully made Snotlout turn into an oversized chicken.

He has only time to yell all the possible curses the world has to offer before we run away, the gods of cheats and pranks smiling down to us.

"That was awesome!" I say, still laughing. "You got that on camera, right?"

"Sure thing!" He laughs too. "And you know what they say, Internet is forever." There is a sinister smirk on his face.

"Wait, you're going to post it?" I ask. His smirk grows larger.

"Wanna do the honors?" He replies, offering the phone. I take a last look at the road before gazing at his phone, the video ready to be posted on YouTube, waiting to press send.

"…yeah." I smirk back, doing it. Hiccup smiles proudly like he just taught me how to walk, and I feel particularly proud as well.

And for a moment, it's just us, as if nothing happened in the last six years. I start to wonder how it would be if the car never had never hit him, or if we never drifted apart afterwards. Would we still be here, doing those pranks at anyone who betrayed our trust? Still laughing, taking a ride on my car after one in the morning? Would things be any different at this precise moment? Could I be the subject of his pranks?

"Hiccup…" I start.

"Yeah?" He looks at me.

I think about just too many things when I look at his eyes. All of the memories of our childhood. "I missed you." Is everything that comes out.

His smile opens wider. "I missed you too." He says, and then looks to the street before us. "What a mess happened to us."

"Yeah…" I say, brilliantly.

"Look Jack…" He turns back at me. "I'm so sorry for what happened to your dad." He tells me, I can tell there is real sorrow in his voice. I give him a sad smile.

"It's alright, Hic."

"Really." He insists. "And not just for that, but… For not being a better friend. Or a friend at all."

He is no longer smiling. I ruffle his hair playfully. "It's okay, really. We were both different from what we used to be then."

"Yeah…" He turns back straight on his seat, but his smile is coming back. "I'm sorry about that as well."

"I'm sorry too." I continue. "For that day, the car accident. Your leg."

"It wasn't your fault." He replies, still smiling. "If anything, I look way more bad-ass now." He raises his prosthetic leg, making me chuckle.

"Now that's for sure."

We remain quiet for a moment, a comfortable silence until he pulls back his paper map. "Okay, so next part, Heather's. I thought we would need to crash at Tuffnut's place too, but I guess he took enough for one day…"

"Oh no, he did not." I say, remembering of the time he splashed glue on my chair, and I spent the rest of the day walking around the school with a stupid white mark on my ass.

"Woohoo, I guess I woke up Jack's vengeful side this night, haven't I?" Hiccup says mischievously.

"Damn right you did." I reply, my face screwed up in a scowl and he laughs. "Heather first, though. What's the plan? And what did she do?"

"Okay… I guess I can trust you for this one." I roll my eyes. "Basically, she has been one of my closest friends, and she knew about Astrid and Snotlout and never even bothered to tell me." He said.

"I see…"

"So, what we are going to do is give her the same explosive surprise that I had when I knew." He says, grabbing the packet of balloons from his backpack. "You drive, I'll fill those."

Safe for the noise of the balloons, the rest of the trip until Heather's place is quiet. When we get there, though, Hiccup already has something like ten black balloons on his lap, weighting their ends with little rocks wrapped with tape.

Heather's car is parked on the side walk, a white Mitsubishi, the dream of every teenager at twelve grade. He picks two balloons, and places them behind the car wheels. Then he grabs something else from his backpack. A plastic bag full of a strange white powder.

"What is it?" I ask.

"Chalk." He smiles before he places it all over the grilles and bumpers, and any other entrance he could find at the hood. Then I help him clean all the excess of the powder.

"What is the purpose on that?" I ask.

Hiccup sighes. "Well, Heather has a thing for air conditioners. I guess that will help her drop the habit." He waves to the chalk, and immediately I understand the plan.

"How stylish." I say, admiringly.

"Yep." He grins at his own work. He straps another post-it note somewhere hidden on the hood: "Now we are transparently clear. ~H"

I chuckle. He smiles at me.

"Okay, now let's get your part done." He whispers. "Tuffnut?"

It must be three A.M. already, but I never felt this awaken before.

"So… how did your mom dealt with… you know?" Hiccup's voice breaks through the silence. "It's okay if you don't want to talk about it…"

"It's cool," I won't lie and say "it's fine, just that my dad died at an accident, she's ooookay", but talking about it with Hiccup does not give me that discomfort. "She locked herself at work, to be honest." I say. "It's rare to have a normal conversation with her. Sometimes it's as if she had given up on me, like she's afraid of talking me."

Hiccup only listens with a serious expression on his face. "Now that sucks." He says. Somehow, it makes me grin.

"Yeah… But I guess she wouldn't care anymore about what happens to me. It's like if I was totally alone even when she's there."

Hiccup stares at his own shoes.

"How often do you think about your dad?" He asks softly.

"Every day. All the time." I reply, almost honestly. "But it doesn't haunt me anymore, like it used to. I guess I accepted what happened." I lie.

"Unlike your mother?"

"Unlike my mother." I partly agree. "But there's nothing I can do for her now, anyways." He only nods.

"Pull in here."

Tuffnut's house is at the southern region of Berk, a neighborhood I don't really know all that well, but Hiccup apparently does. As I turn off the engine, one corner away from his house, Hiccup has already jumped out the car. I follow him, turning on the corner and heading to the front door. He picks something from his hair, which I recognize to be small tweezers.

"Wow, what about the security system?" I say, alarmed. He only sends me a mischievous smile.

"We're in the suburbs, there is no security system." He twists the tweezers a few times and the door opens with a small click. "Come in, there's no way he's home yet."

The house is fairly big, and his parents have a funny taste for furniture. Hiccup must have been here like a thousand times before by the way he knows exactly where he's going. "Wait here."

He disappears inside the kitchen, and comes back a minute later with a plastic jar and a water bottle. He guides me upstairs, climbing the stairs with the most absolute silence. I manage not to trip on every step.

He opens the door for Tuffnut's room silently, but leaves it open after I get in.

"Okay, phase one again." He whispers. He grabs the Veet from his backpack, followed by saran wrap, a plastic bag with marbles, the rest of the lube bottle, an envelope with small peppers on it, another fish and a few other things. "Okay, first things first. Let's get his room ready for the operation," He grins.

He places the jar on the floor, and fills it with water. The he grabs a pair of gloves from his backpack, puts them on and start crushing the pepper inside the jar.

"Oh, you are not doing that…" I say.

"Oh, I am." He replies, squeezing the last pepper and mixing them to the water. "Come on, we don't have much time. He could be here any minute now."

I nod. I grab the saran wrap and head into his bathroom. Just like at Snotlout's house, I wrap the toilet, stretching the plastic so it almost becomes invisible.

"I found Vaseline!" Hiccup says when I get back in the room. "We'll put it on the door handles."

"Why do you think he would have it?" I point, staring at the plastic container as if it had an infectious disease.

"I don't know; he is a weirdo. But hey, let's not complain about the lucks we have." He starts to spread the Vaseline around the handle.

That's when we hear the sound of his door being opened on the first floor.

"Hide!" He quietly shouts at me, hiding under the bed.

I get myself lowered at the corner behind the door, pulling the peppered water jar with me. I see Hiccup raising his thumb at me from beneath the bed when we hear Tuffnut's steps.

The blonde boy drunkenly throws his keys at the desk and goes straight to his bathroom, not even sensing the abusive smell of pepper. His hands still show the blue marks of the nail polisher on the soap. He locks the door behind himself after he enters the toilet, and Hiccup and I slowly rise from our positions.

He unwraps another fish from his backpack and places it under the bed sheets. Then he wraps another post-it note on the desk, his hands quietly stealing Tuffnut's keys on the desk, then he pushes me out of the room, lifting the jar from the floor.

"Place it over the door." He hands me the jar, pointing that I'm way taller than him. He may be the Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third but he is hardly above five-foot-five tall.

I put the jar above the door weighting inwards against the wall, the burning liquid nearly leaking on the carpeted floor.

"What the hell?!" We both hear Tuffnut shout at the bathroom, and I jump in fear before seeing Hiccup spreading the marbles at the top of the stairs.

There is a loud thump when Tuffnut opens the door violently to leave the bathroom, the same time Hiccup and I slip to the bottom of the stairs as quietly as we can manage. I can only hear as the water jar falls straight down into Tuffnut's head, splashing water to the floor and making him scream with the pain of the pepper on his eyes.

Hiccup's hands tremble to unlock the door, and he swings it open right when Tuffnut reaches the stairs, stepping on the marbles and rolling them beneath his feet. He gives a strange dance for two seconds before epically rolling down the stairs like a human ball.

The corridors lights switch on when Hiccup pulls me out to the street, cold air bathing us in a terrible contrast against the warm house.

"Look at us, we're ninjas!" Hiccup says excitedly as we sprint to the car.

"You're a ninja, I'm not a ninja." I say, gasping for air.

"You're a ninja too, just a really… awkward one." He jumps over the car's hood, sliding to the passenger side.

"I can feel my heart beating on my chest!" I say when we finally jump inside the car.

"That's when you know you're having fun." He replies, and we both laugh as we speed into the night.

"Last stop, Astrid's." Hiccup looks at the map one last time. "That one will be easy. She lives close."

I know where Astrid lives. Her house is only a few blocks away from ours, so I make the way I'd use to get to my own house. It feels strange for a reason, as if I this adventure was over and we were about to get home when the truth is the very opposite of it.

"Shut the lights!" Hiccup points to Astrid's house, a few blocks away, where two figures are walking, hands given to each other, walking straight to Astrid's house. "And there's the little bitch." Hiccup mutters. "Come on, turn off the engine. You have a crowbar?"

I let the car roll down the street until we reach the house next to Astrid's. "Uh… on the trunk, I guess." I don't even question his request anymore. Hiccup only takes two things from his backpack, one last air horn and a paper cockroach.

"She thinks she's clever," He mutters again, pouring glue in the paper cockroach. "But she forgets that I'm a prodigy." He pulls another paper from the backpack, and wraps it around the air horn, making it look like an insecticide, if you ignore the horn on top of it.

"Or a psycho." I say, my face messed up in a small grin.

Hiccup freezes his hands and stares at me. I don't know exactly what his expression says, but it keeps me still. It's as if he was evaluating me, but with a small smirk on his lips.

His hand grabs my shoulder, pulling me close to him, and he places a peck on my right cheek. And just like nothing had happened, he opens the door and jumps out of the car, and I take two seconds before remembering that I was meant to follow him. My face is burning, certainly blushing, so I pull on my hood.

With my crowbar in hands, Hiccup walks not at Astrid's house, but at the blue sport car parked in the opposite sidewalk.

"Wait, Hic!" I lowly yell.

"Chill." He replies. He opens the car without using his keys. "Idiot never locks his car." He mutters before jamming the wheel with the crowbar, pushing it off like with such simplicity that makes him look like such a badass...

He grabs the loose wheel, and I am surprised to see it doesn't even look broken, and then holds it dearly as he closes the door, walking towards the house with a devious grin. "I can't believe you done this." I say.

The brown haired boy only rolls his eyes, looking at me with an are you serious expression that immediately makes me shut up. He throws the wheel behind some bushes.

"Okay, she has to stop by her room to 'get changed'," – he quotes, "enough time to turn them both on, and they'll start making out, which gives us like, a minute and a half to do it." He says everything very fast, and I am almost asking him to repeat when he dashes to the garden, kneeling in front a small window that should leave to Astrid's basement.

"Go on." He tells me, and I roll over my back through the window, falling on my feet like a professional parkour runner. "Nice," he says, and I feel slightly proud of myself. Hiccup slips in gracefully after me. "Okay, let's get started."

There is an old bed on the middle of the basement - that looks more like an actual room than a basement -. There is a lampshade over an old commode near the bed, and Hiccup rushes to it, gluing the paper cockroach on the inner side of the lampshade.

"Quickly, grab that insecticide over there," He gestures to a bottle over a desk on the other side of the basement. I throw it to him, and he hides the bottle under some boxes full of junk. We hear the first moans from Astrid and Snotlout, followed by steps. I am on the verge of panicking, but Hiccup only smirks mischievously. "Let's see if her parents won't hear this."

We run to the window, I lift Hiccup by his waist, and after he gets to the top of the window, he pulls me up with him just as the door opens. They are so lost on their heavy make-out that they don't even notice us staring from the window. Snotlout is already shirtless as he tries to take Astrid's bra off her, on a desperate dance to strip off their clothes.

Hiccup muffles a laugh, and I look at him. He does not show envy, remorse or disappointment. If anything, he is clearly having fun, excitement shining in his eyes. I smile without even noticing.

"Three… two… one…" He counts, and as soon as Astrid turns on the lampshade, we hear her muffled scream at the terrifying shadow of the cockroach. Hiccup holds his mouth with his hand, and then we start laughing proudly as a completely senseless Snotlout grabs the fake insecticide bottle, only to flare up the basement in the impossibly loud noise.

"How can they be so stupid?" Hiccup says before pulling away from the window, dragging me with him. Above us, Astrid parents' room lights up, and in a few seconds, we run away from the house, then we see a naked Snotlout running away through the window.

He sprints towards his car, holding his crotch with his hands, his flat butt waving at every step until he opens the door, sitting down and taking around ten seconds to realize the wheel is gone. Then sprints out again, completely naked on the street.

We roll ourselves on the ground, laughing so hard that I feel my lungs could explode. Then I notice Hiccups expression again. He is still not done with Astrid.

"You still have another fish, right?" I ask.

"Yep. And this one goes in her room." Hiccup says.

"Okay then." I say. Before we can walk, though, I fell Hiccup's fingers lacing themselves on mine. I hide a smile, my chest burning with warmth.

It is pretty easy to climb the tree near her window. "I did that for months before her parents knew that we were dating." He says.

"I hope it was worth it. How good is she?" I whisper, holding myself on the branches, pushing myself upward as I try not to sound too hurt by the idea of Hiccup dating someone else.

"On the bed? Too aggressive, and she kind of sucks..." He reaches her window in a record time, and jumps into her room. "Okay, this one is a piece of cake." I follow him. We can hear the loud argument happening two floors beneath us. Hiccup takes the last fish from his backpack, and places it between her clothes in the closet. He also takes his black marker, and starts drawing a long and precise H on her wall. "Oh look, we still have some marbles."

In seconds, he throws the marbles through her room, and they spread at every possible direction. He taps a last post-it note on her desk.

"Now let's go!" He says before pushing me back to the window, and we both jump back to the tree, making our way back down.

We are at the car when we hear Astrid screaming.

"Go-go-go!" Hiccup yells as we reach my car.

Hiccup turns on the radio after a few blocks. It is four A.M. right now. There is a weird music going on, a mix of an emotional electronic with pop that Hiccup seems to recognize. It really makes an epic scene; the streets are desert right now, so we could be the last living souls in this city.

The last place we visit is in downtown Berk, Hiccup asks me to park in front of one of the skyscrapers from the financial district. He jumps out of the car before I can stop him.

"Hey, Hic!" But he doesn't listen. I get out of the car after him. "Hiccup, wait." He stops and turns at me.

"Well, for the seventh and last place: at the end of a grand adventure, one must pause and reflect about one's achievements." It's as if he had a speech for this moment again. "And the best place in Berk to do that is in the Metropolitan building."

"Hiccup, we can't break into this place."

"We are not breaking in!" He tells. "We're just getting in."

"Very clever. Hiccup, this is Berk's most famous building." I cross my arms over my chest. "There must be a guard at least, or something."

"Of course there is." He smiles. "His name is Bran."

He turns always, and walks towards the entrance of the building. Apparently, Bran knows Hiccup, since he smiles and waves at him. "Hey, Hiccup."

"Hey, Bran," Hiccup answers. "Mind if we go up for a bit?"

"Sure." He replies. Then he notices me. "Who's this guy?"

Hiccup does not even look back. "Jack." I make a two finger salute at Bran, who nods back.

We take an elevator straight to the last floor, and Hiccup stays silent the entire way up. I try my hardest to keep my mind away from any suggestive thought, but it's hard. When we get out, Hiccup leads me through the corridors.

"Welcome to my escape route." He says, opening the huge glass doors into a meeting office, chairs set around a large expensive table, but they are right before a huge window, revealing Berk's skyline.

"Wow…" I say. I get lost in the view. From up here, the city seems like a huge paper model. The streetlights remind me of Christmas, shining randomly in the horizon.

"Okay, so there is Astrid's place." Hiccup points somewhere far in the island. "And there is Snotlout's house," his finger drifts into another point. "And there is Tuffnut's. No sirens, no cops." I chuckle. "No felonies that will ruin our lives. I think we are in the clear." I am still smiling. It feels like the city is ours.

"It's beautiful."

"Yeah, I know." Hiccup says. "Everything looks uglier at close."

I look at him, his green eyes lost in the view. "Not you." I feel like slapping myself again, so I turn back to the window, but I can feel him staring at me. I end up spacing out in the view. "I can't stand this place anymore." I say, lost in thought.

"You wanna get out?" Hiccup asks.

"No, I mean, this city." I gesture to the city. "I can't wait to get out of here."

He is still looking at me. Then back at the window. "It's a frozen city." He says.

"Huh?"

"I mean, frozen. Stuck in time. People never move forwards. They are forever stuck on frozen promises. On broken futures." I look at him again. "I live here for sixteen years and I still haven't really seen any change worth noticing, no matter how many times they planned to make things better, even for themselves." He says. "They are forever stuck on forever." He looks back at me and I force myself not to look away. "Does that makes any sense?"

"Yes, it does."

The silence take over us again. I could stay frozen here with him forever. I feel his fingers lacing with mine, and I try my hardest to suppress the warmth that spreads over my chest. I hold his hand, and before I can think of anything to say, Hiccup surprises me when he turns around, hugging me by my neck.

"I'm leaving Berk." He whispers.

I look at the reflection of his back on the window. "What?"

"I'm leaving Berk tonight." He repeats on my ear, and I notice both tension, excitement and sadness on his voice, all at once. I take a step back to face him.

"You can't leave… You can't leave Berk." I say, still holding his shoulders. "This… this is your home, besides where-" My blood seems to flush away from my body. "-where would you go?"

"I don't know where I'm going." He simply replies, and I can see a tearfulness shine on his eyes. "But I can't stay here anymore."

I pull him just a little closer, so our foreheads could be touching. "What happened, Hic?"

He closes his eyes, breathes in. "My dad will kill me after he finds out."

I hold him by his back. "Finds out what?" His eyes finally open, and they stare at me. Much more green and beautiful than what I can remember.

"Snotlout knows a secret about me. Plus, after tonight, it's quite possible that he'll spread it everywhere. It's why Astrid was cheating on me, and why I couldn't really care less, honestly. So I'm leaving. And I am not coming back." He pulls me closer, and I can feel he is shaking. "There is one last thing I need to do tonight."

He leans in to kiss me. When our lips meet, my heart stops beating and the room we are in disappears. Right now I am flying outside that glass, floating over the city because there is where Hiccup's kiss takes me. Years of bottled up feelings splashes in a second, and I don't want it to end.

However, it does. Eventually we are forced to step away, gasping for air and we place our foreheads against one another. "Sorry, I was holding on not to do this." He says.

I chuckle. "I was doing the same thing." And we both laugh. We're pressed against each other, and Hiccup lays small kisses on my cheeks and lips, burning me with warmth as I hold him around his waist, his arms around my neck. I breathe in his scent, warm wood, metal and shampoo and suddenly I am sure about my next words. "I can't let you go."

He sighs. "You have to."

I rub my nose against his. "I can't." And before he can say anything, I kiss him again, another row of shivers and butterflies crossing through all of me. "I'm going with you."

#

Author Notes:

So the Original Story for Paper Towns is focused on Q and his superficial/insecure views of the world, represented by the daring and adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman. This is the main theme I used to make Jack's character arc so far in this story, but I wondered a different outcome: Jack is not afraid of the World, he is hurt by it. Therefore, Jack's journey is not as much as in the perspective of how you see other people and knowing where you are, but an arch of freedom right from the beggining. Both Margo an Hiccup work as liberators for the main character's personal freedom from the lie they believe in, which in Jack's case is the torment of his depressed mom, the grief for his father and the oppresive paths of the educational system (study medicine/work as a writer for no money); and then launching himself into the world.


End file.
